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Does morality exist without God?
- Thread starter AGODBELIEVERlove1stfaith2
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I hope I'm not repeating well-trodden territory.
I think a god outside time renders some of the question moot. Part of the presumed problem is that if God knows what we will do, we have no choice; if we have a choice, God cannot know.
If however God is outside time, then God is not predicting the future but rather seeing the future. Indeed, 'future' is not a reasonable term from this perspective. God sees a whole, entire, complete, space-time object. To confuse my terms somewhat, God does not see what we will do but rather what we have done. As many apologists have noted via analogy, if we watch a film of candid behavior multiple times, the fact that we know what will happen does not imply that those characters did not have a choice.
Now a god outside of time has its own problems such as how does such a being sequence its actions; can it act at all. For those reasons, while I was still a theist, I came to a pan-en-theistic position, but that is a story for another day.
I think a god outside time renders some of the question moot. Part of the presumed problem is that if God knows what we will do, we have no choice; if we have a choice, God cannot know.
If however God is outside time, then God is not predicting the future but rather seeing the future. Indeed, 'future' is not a reasonable term from this perspective. God sees a whole, entire, complete, space-time object. To confuse my terms somewhat, God does not see what we will do but rather what we have done. As many apologists have noted via analogy, if we watch a film of candid behavior multiple times, the fact that we know what will happen does not imply that those characters did not have a choice.
Now a god outside of time has its own problems such as how does such a being sequence its actions; can it act at all. For those reasons, while I was still a theist, I came to a pan-en-theistic position, but that is a story for another day.
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- Jul 7, 2010
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How can I have free will then? If the path I take is already known by God then it would seem that my free will is an illusion. The choices I make and the consequences there of are already known and I can not change that. How do you explain this seeming discrepancy?
Understood, however it would seem the problem of free will would be even more difficult for God. If he knows exactly what he will do in the future is he not locked in to that action as well? Could God see himself intervening in the future but then decide not to do so? I suppose this is more of a rhetorical question then anything else. I doubt us limited humans could ever come up with a good answer to it.
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An interesting point. I think where the analogy breaks down though is that the actors caught on film had a choice, the representation provided by the film does not. No matter how many times you play the movie the story will not change one iota. If an omniscient being is a reality, then we are not the actors we are simply their representation on film. Does that make sense?
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Well all analogies break down, but I get your point. If God is outside time and creates an whole and complete space-time object, then in a very real sense our future actions are created and hence determined. Such a simple objection; I wonder why I never thought of it.
I think the point still stands that if a being is outside time as a mere observer then we can say that the analogy ends where it ends--seeing the "future" as "present" doesn't pose a free will problem. However, if the being in question is the creator God then it is not merely an observer--it created our "future" actions.
Well done, sir.
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If someone were to invent a time machine (and used it) then they already have. Forever.
I utterly loathe time travel movies. "If," a time travel was used to alter anything, then the altered event would have never presented itself to a time when it needed to be altered.
If Van Damme had to go back in time to save his blown up wife, then his wife was never blown up in the first place. And on and on.
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Oh, and since the thought of a morality exists in the mind of humans, then God exists in reality. Morality makes no evolutionary sense as too many frail and useless people benefit from its implementation.
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sandwiches
Mas sabe el diablo por viejo que por diablo.
Would God be the ultimate observer collapsing every possible wave function? God already observed the cat being dead or alive.
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Perhaps you'd do well to read your bible then.
Malachi 3:6
I the LORD do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.
Psalm 119:89
Your word, LORD, is eternal;
it stands firm in the heavens.
Ecclesiastes 3:14
I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.
Hebrews 6:17-18
Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. 18 God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged.
James 1:17
Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.
So yes, according to the bible God is unchanging.
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This has been covered many times. This argument is poor as only until the last few thousand years has civilization been advanced enough to even keep the frail and weak alive. Before that they'd die out anyway. We have evolved a natural sense of empathy however, just like how we react almost immediately to a child crying out.
Basically what you're trying to use is the transcendental argument for god, which has a few fallacies in it that make it untrue.
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And you have just proven your original position wrong. God is not all knowing because we have the power to change the future. Thus, at any exact moment in time, God can only tell us the logical future at that infinitely small point in time. Move further a second, and the future changes. Thus, as time is always in motion, God never knows the future beyond a 'best guess'.
Thus god is not all knowing.
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Did I not logically refute it more than once here?
rjc34 said:
And you replied with:
Jaws13 said:
So basically here you've recognized that the future can be unchanging, but you still fail to realize that an unchanging future makes it logically impossible to change it! You keep saying he 'can' change it if he 'wanted' to, but that logically makes no sense. You're simply giving a cop out argument. If Yahweh did intervene in the world somehow, that would change the future, and thus he wouldn't have been all knowing from the start.
Knowing the future requires by definition that the future be unchanging, else if he can change it down the line, he did not previously know the true future.
Please, show me the flaw in my logical reasoning if you can, without making up some attributes about god.
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sandwiches
Mas sabe el diablo por viejo que por diablo.
tinker made me think of something with this movie analogy. I was thinking of home movies we take and then watch years later. Did we really have a choice back then? Could things really have turned out any different than they did? Are these questions meaningful and useful?
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I don't believe I stated I believe in it now. Truth of the matter is, we are unsure if we have free will or not. Makes the questions of deities a bit more difficult to answer.
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I would have considered that since God is outside of known reality, it isn't necessary that that observation would collapse the wave function. IOW, it would be unknowable just how a God outside of time would do his observation.
Part of my surmise as a Christian (well on the way to heresy and from thence to apostasy) was that God did not create ex nihilo, but rather ex Deo. Also, with a panentheistic view, everything is part of God. As such, perhaps time is a property inherited from God. Thus God can sequence his actions. However, his time might be orthogonal to ours enabling complete independence of operation. I.e., perhaps he has an infinite amount of time to decide anything. If his time is not entirely orthogonal, I think one sacrifices the concept of true omniscience. But as I noted, I was on my way to heresy anyway. OTOH, if everything is part of God, then how can he not know everything--perhaps across all time-space. (Another advantage of ex Deo and panentheism is that we need not consider God's decisions as arbitrary but part and parcel with his--and our--very nature.)
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